


Foreshadowing

by Moahoa



Series: Winds verse [1]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Childhood Friends, Divination, F/M, Fate & Destiny, Jealous Loki (Marvel), Jealousy, Magical Accidents, Mythology References, Pining, References to Norse Religion & Lore, Soulmates, Vanaheimr | Vanaheim, Young Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-02
Updated: 2020-02-02
Packaged: 2021-02-27 22:01:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,963
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22532923
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Moahoa/pseuds/Moahoa
Summary: The act of accidentally throwing a shadow over your future. Alternatively titled the one in which Loki accidentally dyes Sif’s hair black.(Prequel to my Scattered to the winds fic, but can be read as standalone.)
Relationships: Frigga | Freyja & Loki (Marvel), Loki & Sif & Thor (Marvel), Loki/Sif (Marvel), Sif & Thor (Marvel)
Series: Winds verse [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1621225
Comments: 5
Kudos: 12





	Foreshadowing

His mother’s private chambers were a great source of mystery. Partly because Frigga was the queen of Asgard and as such needed a place from both the everyday drama of interstellar politics and rowdy children. Mostly because it was a sanctum the most sacred magical artifacts in Asgard that hadn’t yet been confined to the treasury. The piece d’resistance of Vanaheim.

The tapestry of fate.

Loki had only seen it twice in passing and never like this, never in full view.

Honestly it wasn’t as a lot less impressive than he’d imagined. Unlike the tapestries that adorned their private chambers the pieces of yarn weren’t woven together in a clear pattern. Color, weight and textured mixed freely, winding and unwinding, in a mess that stretched far beyond the golden loom it was placed up on. It was said it stretched as far back as time itself.

Finding what he was looking for by hand would be a fools errand. Trying to locate ta thread by magic was risky at best and a sure way to loose ones mind at worst. Seeing ones fate could drive the best of them mad, it was said.

Luckily for Loki, he wasn’t here to look for his own thread. He was looking for the one belonging to the only tolerable girl in the court. The location spell he had prepared was simple, but required blood.

Luckily for Loki, the girl he was looking for had a habit of spilling hers frequently, when sparring. She hadn’t even noticed the little prick of his throwing knife as they’d wrestled. The wound had been no bigger than the top of a fingernail, so he hoped she’d forgive him.

Unluckily for him, the spell also required a lock of hair, which he’d been less discreet in aquiring. She’d chased him down the palace hall sqreaming bloody murder for cutting of a whole curl of her golden locks. Eventually he’d been able to convince her it was an accident. Which was half-true, he’d only meant to cut off an end after all.

He winds the lock around the dried blood, chanting quietly.

”Oh fates three, guide my sight, let me find what I seek.”

He closes his eyes, letting his other hand rest against the tapestry, waiting for the seidr to fill his fingers and guide him to the right spot. He doesn’t have to wait long, his hands move as if possessed. Unfamiliar places and worlds flash before his eyes, but he focuses on the image of Sif, her angry face from this morning, standing over him with her blade, golden hair flaring around hair in a feral-looking halo and tunic already sullied from her hunt with Thor the very same morning.

Suddenly his hands stop and he knows the seidr has guided him to the right one. But he doesn’t dare to look. Not yet. Nimbly he follows the thread down until it winds with another. Still he doesn’t dare to open his eyes.

He knew there was a good possibility she already had an intended. It was why he was here after all. But feeling the proof between his fingertips, now that was something else. He breaths once, then twice, then thrice. Still he doesn’t dare to open his eyes.

”Come on, come on, come one.” He mumbles to himself.

Fate didn’t lie. All he had to do was to open his eyes. Just a quick glance and he would know if his fears were true. One glance and he’d know if the way she’d dropped out of their shared seidr classes to focus on the art of war would divert them further. One glance and he’d know if the way she’d always pick Thor over him for sparring mattered. One glance and he’d know if the thread that winded with hers were navy blue and silver or green and gold.

”Just open your eyes you coward.” He hisses, biting his lip.

Then he opens them.

He finds that one of the threads is indeed the unmistakable red and that Sif adorns herself in, but the other thread was like nothing he’d ever seen before.

The thread was unobtrusively disgustingly _blue_. And not even the deep rich kind favored by the nobility, but a sickly dull shade, like a corpse or of the first frost in November, the one that did little except kill crops and create mayhem.

The more he stared at it, the more he couldn’t believe his eyes.

He lets his finger stray from the first time the yarn winds together, in hopes of seeing the strange thread part from the deep red further down. He follows to the very end of the loom. Though the strange thread thins to the point of almost see-through, it stayed wound with Sif’s.

Loki wants to laugh and cry at the same time. He’d told himself that there was no guarantees. Had promised himself that he’d forget her if he as much found a hint of his brothers navy and laced with hers. That one couldn’t change fate. But blue? A stranger’s blue?

That was giving up to the unkown, like leaving walk-over without the gauntlet having been thrown. A dull ache fills his chest and he feels the same deep hoplessness take over as the time he’d almost drowned in a stream in trying to cross it as a snake. Though his brother hadn’t been here to witness his failiure this time, he feels even more embaressed. Cheated.

His fingers long to pick at what little of the frosty blue he can see at the points where it is weakest. He knows it won’t budge, but it doesn’t matter. Something inside him wants, needs to lash out. Something horribly unkown and painful. He feels like he’s going to be sick.

Then the familiar pull of seidr reaches to greet him and suddenly the buzz beneath his skin doesn’t feel so bad. He runs a thumb over the blue thread and for just a second, he sees a million possibilites, none of which are clear. In fact they’re positively frightening, but they leave him feeling… powerful?

No, not powerful, full of life, _buzzing_.

He thinks that, he ought to pity the creature to whom such a hideous shade could belong to because if someone that ugly was meant to wed the fair lady Sif… well such a contrast would blind everyone, would it not? And that maybe, just maybe he ought to do them a favor and color her thread to match.

Ans just like that, his magic spills from his fingers lapping at the threads like a hungry beast. It’s strange feeling, but not an uncomfortable one. His mother had warned that the seidr itself lived and breathed and that giving into it’s whims not only lose control, but the very self. That it was better to weave, word for word like the drops of rain form a river in springtime, lest one get swept away by the tide. Now, all her lessons felt like wasted time, a way to slow him down, because what was risk in front of the feeling of raw untapped–

”Son of Odin!”

_Shit._

Loki drops the thread and the feeling is gone, the vacuum of it feels like the size of a planet. Then there is pain, dull at first, like the pins and needles you’d get after playing in the snow for too long. Then it starts to sear. Loki finally dares to look at his right hand. His fingertips are jet black, as if he’s dipped them in ink. He finds Sif’s thread in a similar state.

His brain screams at him to run far away from this mess, but Loki finds himself stuck, unable to tear his gaze from his darkened fingertips.

That is until Frigga grips his wrist and wrenches his entire right arm forward.

”Mother!” He yelps, but quickly falters, as there really wasn’t anything he could say at this point, not even he could talk his way out of _this_ , whatever _this_ was.

_Oh gods, what if he’d hurt her? What if he had killed Sif?_

The panic takes hold once more and he wonders if being a prince really meant he was protected him from both a charge of manslaughter and using dark magic, however accidental it may have been. He waits for his mother to call the guards, to order that he’d be taken to the dungeons, where he’d rot away, away from his kingdom, away from his family.

He doesn’t even realise he’s crying until Frigga wipes away a tear.

”Oh, Loki.” She sighs and fixes him with a hug, something about the quiver in her voice makes him think she might be crying too.

It’s a perfect opportunity to plead, but the finds himself unable to speak for the longest time. Burying his face in her skirts as if he was a boy half his age.

”I’m sorry.” He whimpers, even though it isn’t enough, cannot be enough for what he’s done. _He’d killed the only one that mattered and he’d killed her over jealousy. He’d deserve to rot._

”Shhhh…” Frigga soothes, patting his hair and rubbing circles into the small of his back.

He really wished she wouldn’t, because although it takes away the pain in his right hand, the pain in his chest swells so much that it threatens to swallow him whole. He cries for what feels like an eternity until, he finally manages to wiggle free.

”I was just… I … Can I–you–Can we fix it?” He pleads, defiantly rubbing the tears away with his sleeve as he forces out the words.

Frigga examines both his hands and the tapestry carefully, running her fingers over the scorch marks.

”I’m afraid stains like this don’t wash out.” She finally says, tucking a strand of hair behind his ear, that he hadn’t even realized had fallen out of place.

It’s not good news, but Loki is all cried out at this point and Frigga is smiling that half-smile that means she wasn’t telling him the whole truth just yet. As usual it wakes his insatiable curiosity.

”Do you remember the first law of divination?” She asks.

Finally realisation dawns upon the young princes face.

”The seidr can only record fate, not alter it?” He says. ”Does that mean the spell didn’t work?”

”I wouldn’t say that, it most certainly did _something_ , just not _something_ fate hasn’t already forseen.” Frigga says cryptically.

”What is that supposed to mean?” Loki questions.

In truth Frigga had never seen anything quite like it before and that part of her was proud of the innate affinity for magic her son displayed, even if she wasn’t overly fond of the ways it manifested. Now, telling her son this would only inflate his ego, so she diverts his attention.

”That is for me to know and you to find out. Also, you are to apologize to the Lady Sif for whatever you mayhem you have caused.” She commands.

Loki’s excitement fades. Sure, he was curious to check what fate had befallen his dear Sif, but the prospect of having to admit he was the one to cause said change… now that was an idea he wasn’t very fond of. Maybe he could convince her he had to do it to save her from a curse of some kind? Or maybe if he waited a good hundred years or so Sif wouldn’t have his head for it?

Unluckily for Loki, he was standing in front of the only person in the realm more used to exploiting loopholes than him

”Immediately.” She adds.

”Yes, mother.” Loki nods obediently, giving her a curt bow before exciting the room.

Hopefully he’d get to keep at least half of his limbs.


End file.
